Fifteen years in, Ken Eppstein remains committed to Nix Comics

As Ken Eppstein prepares to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Nix Comics, he acknowledged that approaching the benchmark had left him feeling both more reflective and inherently thankful that the indie comics imprint he founded in 2011 had managed to survive all of this time.

“There’s just the improbability of 15 years, and all of the things that have to happen for me to end up where I am now, doing what I’ve done, and doing what I continue to do. It’s a tapestry, you know, and it’s pretty crazy,” said Eppstein, who will celebrate the anniversary with a party at Kafe Kerouac on Saturday, Feb. 28, featuring a performance by the Thrasher Brothers and the announcement of a new trio of Nix comics coming this year. “I look at all the small businesses and artistic efforts that started around the same time that didn’t make it. And then I look at the people… You know, it’s that old Isaac Newton thing about ‘standing on the shoulders of giants,’ where I’m looking at the local guys like Bob Corby and Micheal Neno, who have been chugging at it for much longer than 15 years, and it’s an interesting feeling. It’s maybe unduly prideful, but I’m happy about it. And I’m also taking the point of view that I always have with Columbus comics, which is if I don’t celebrate it, no one’s coming.”

Eppstein said there wasn’t a singular jolt that led him to launch Nix, but rather a series of smaller shocks that included: a gap he saw existent in the comics scene; his conflicted view of the larger comics world, dominated by superhero titles that for him hold little interest; and a resume steeped in nonprofit and startup work that he said left him better equipped to deal with the various clerical hurdles that accompany the creation of an imprint.

“I think I realized I was one of the few guys who could really take a swing at it,” Eppstein said. “I kind of felt like the right guy in the right place at the right time to fulfill my own, weird desires.”

It helped, of course, that Eppstein was instilled from the start with a clarity of vision, aiming for Nix to tread that middle ground between punk zines and the kinds of titles issued under the EC Comics banner in the 1950s, which included Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and Crime SuspenStories, among others. “I think that was what I wanted anyway, though along the way maybe I came up with something better,” Eppstein said. “I wish I could remember who said this, or where I heard it, but this person was talking about how the gap between your inspirations and what you’re able to create is what becomes your style, your persona, who you are. And I was lucky to find that.”

Eppstein launched the imprint with Nix Comics Quarterly, a horror book laced with humor, maintaining the quarterly pace for the first year before dialing back owing to budgetary constraints. “I kind of fell back on telling people I never said a quarter of what,” Eppstein said, and laughed. “But I think I fell victim to napkin math that first year, where I said, ‘Well, if I sell five copies wholesale in every major city in the country,’ and then I paid artists accordingly, and it didn’t work out. So, there was only so much to be gained from the money I had socked away, and things had to change.”

While there have been challenging stretches for Nix – particularly during the early Covid years and a stretch in which Eppstein said he went underemployed – the imprint has continued to endure, reaching what the artist termed “a comfortable realm” where he can execute plans absent concerns he will be left financially underwater. This recently included the publication of a trio of paperback collections: Undead Ballads, comprised of all of the Nix Comics Quarterly horror-rock stories; The Sheriff and the Gunsell, featuring Nix Western Comics Nos. 1-4 and tracing the lives of two gunfighters backwards from their demise; and Living With Explosions, a series set primarily in the early ’90s Columbus music scene and based in the stories and recollections of author and Anyway Records founder Bela Koe-Krompecher and drawn by artist Andy Bennett. In the time since, Nix has also released Sketchbook Picture Sleeves Vol. 3 and two more editions of Takes from the Crate (numbers eight and nine in the series).

For the coming year, Eppstein already has a handful of releases in the works featuring contributions from artists Andy Bennett, CM Campbell, Darren Merinuk, Michael Neno, Pat Redding Scanlon, Josie Renkwitz, and Bob Ray Starker, the details of which he plans to announce at Kafe Kerouac this weekend. (More broadly, Eppstein said the trio of forthcoming titles feature “something old, something new and experimental, and a passion project reprint collection for an artist.”) 

Beyond that, Eppstein has toyed with the idea of spearheading a larger-scale comics and music festival, as well as reviving the kind of indie comics fair he once hosted at the Old North concert venue Ace of Cups. 

“I’ve never been good at being ambitious,” said Eppstein, who described his motivations for continuing with Nix as in line with the imprint’s earliest days, understanding a void would exist for this type of work in its absence. “I think once you start, if it’s a love affair, you keep going. And if it’s not, you move on. And there’s nothing wrong with that; I’ve certainly known a lot of people who hung it up because it just wasn’t that deep of a commitment for them. And I guess that’s it. This became a commitment at some point along the line rather than a fancy.”